Review
THE RETURN OF THE KING
Starring Elijah Woods, Ian McKellen and Viggo Mortensen
Directed by Peter Jackson
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I remember going to the movies as a child and being instilled with a sense of awe by the images I saw on the screen. The lights would dim, my jaw would fall and for the next two hours the world, as I knew it, did not exist. What did exist was a world where anything was possible and life was definable – it was a world of good versus evil. I miss those days.
I did until I saw Return of the King, Peter Jackson’s final instalment in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Despite not being a loyal follower of the series (I’ve only seen the movies once and have never read the books) for 200 minutes I was 10 years old again, as my expectations were met and then trampled upon by giant orcs, flying dragons and lumbering mammoth-like elephants.
As was alluded to in The Two Towers, Return of the King sees Gollum taking on a much more antagonistic role. So it only seems fitting that the film starts off with one final piece of exposition: flashback to happier times when a hobbit-like Gollum first discovers the ring of power with a friend. The lengths he goes to acquiring the ring showcases its corruptive, degenerating power and foreshadows the tribulations yet to befall its new bearer.
The film then falls into the parallel editing strategy used so effectively in Towers as Jackson cuts between Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam’s (Sean Astin) final leg to destroy the ring, and Gandalf (Ian McKellen), Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) and company’s fight for humanity. In so doing, editor Michael Horton (The Quiet Earth) is free to cut in and out of the action as he sees fit, slowly building the pacing of the two narratives to one seamless climax– capturing perfectly the film’s overall tones of urgency and desperation.
It’s only in the resolution during the third act, when the audience is still wired from the sweat-spilling climax, that the film begins to taper off. And while I’m aware that there is much for Jackson to resolve, it’s hard for an audience not to become restless during the 20 minutes it takes for this film to spew its Christian allegories – especially after the ride we’ve just been on. And I won’t even get into the thinly veiled connotations being thrown at us as giant eagles soar to the rescue.
But all this is easily overlooked with a film of this calibre. It’s a cinematic experience filled with such grandeur and bravado (only heightened by Howard Shore’s timeless score) that it’s hard to refrain from standing and cheering while watching. A film with such spectacular computer-generated effects it’s enough to make Lucas cringe and a traditionalist like myself reconsider. A film that has breathed new life into a genre that was almost responsible for bringing down the studio system in the ’60s. A film that is, quite simply, an epic. |
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